


maybe just not being is simply enough.

by henryclerval



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mild Language, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Beta Read, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, warm up piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-20 12:28:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1510457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henryclerval/pseuds/henryclerval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is small and bony in his arms, unsure of his entire body despite having spent nearly two decades in it. He’s skin and protruding elbows that bump into Bucky’s ribs, a spinal cord that stab with each vertebra, and a dropping body temperature that is sapping away the warmth from their thin blankets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	maybe just not being is simply enough.

Steve is small and bony in his arms, unsure of his entire body despite having spent nearly two decades in it. He’s skin and protruding elbows that bump into Bucky’s ribs, a spinal cord that stab with each vertebra, and a dropping body temperature that is sapping away the warmth from their thin blankets. 

It’s sleeting outside and Bucky thinks he hears a roll of thunder far off in the distance. He holds Steve tighter, hears him wheeze. He pets down Steve’s side and hears him wheeze. Bucky turns his head to breathe, and hears Steve wheeze. It’s enough to keep the thunder at bay. 

Steve is small and bony in his arms—his feet are freezing despite the multiple pairs of socks, and his hands are tucked into his armpits to snuff out the last crevice of warmth. He shakes with tiny tremors and Bucky subdues them as best as he can manage. There’s no heat that he hasn’t already sacrificed for Steve. Curled and coiled he tucks Steve’s head under his chin; the last little wheeze huffs out in front of him pitifully. 

Steve is small and bony in his arms. He shakes and shivers and wheezes and his joints creak like a man four times his age. Though worry is ever-present within Bucky there’s something about daylight and seeing Steve move and talk and scrap that wears it down—something in seeing the weak muscles carry him to and fro and the glint in Steve’s eyes that tramples the panic. 

But when it’s cold and sleeting and the dead of winter and Steve is shuddering and quaking and there’s nothing more that Bucky can do but push together their mattresses and share their blankets, the panic rises. He can pick apart men but he has yet to pull apart the seasons, the cold that sinks into their apartment, the rattle that rolls in Steve’s chest. 

He presses his face into the back of Steve’s hair and tries to keep it together—there’s no reason for him to get so worked up over something that happens as often as this. The boom of thunder and the sleet clawing against the windowpane hasn’t gotten to Steve before. There’s no reason to think it will now. 

* 

When he gets drafted, he finds Steve with his head being knocked into the ground. 

Maybe his reaction is too extreme. He grabs the man by his collar and slams him into the alley wall, over and over, and over and over. He kicks the man’s stomach, his chest, picks him up by his hair practically and rams his fist into his jaw for good measure. 

Bucky’s chest is heaving and his face is on fire when Steve grabs his arm to hold back the last punch. He’s physically pulled off the other man who scrabbles away, gasping almost as hard as Steve is—but Steve, small and bony and face nearly broken in two manages to get out the lecture of a lifetime. He’s scolding and yelling and filled with _what the hell were you thinking_ and _what is wrong with you_ and _you nearly killed him_ and it doesn't matter who the perpetrator is, too much violence is too much violence. 

Bucky can’t hear him over the roar in his ears, in his skin, in the bruised flesh of his knuckles where they were collateral in his onslaught. 

And Steve gets this look on his face—he’s disappointed and angry and sad and it’s all aimed at Bucky, like he wasn’t the one who just saved Steve’s life. Like he hadn’t been the one who just kept him from the hospital, or kept him from being brain damaged. Like he isn’t the one who passes up food so that maybe Steve isn’t so concave, who pulls extra shifts to afford new sweaters. 

He wants to shout and shriek at Steve but all the volume gets lost in his throat, leaking out as a pathetic, coughed up croak. 

The crumpled letter is searing in his pants pocket and Steve’s glare matches it burn for burn until Bucky mutters some halfhearted apology. When he drags his handkerchief out of his pocket Steve tells him not to bother. 

He leaves Bucky in the alleyway, splotchy faced and fisting his handkerchief. 

* 

Steve isn’t cruel. He waits until Bucky finally shows him the letter—because their secrets are far and few between, lovingly smothered at the bottom of their stomachs—to apologize. 

_Congratulations_ , is what he says, like this piece of paper isn’t his death sentence. Bucky can see the look in Steve’s eye waning into jealousy. He can practically taste it in the air, when Steve hands him the letter, when he hears Steve stumble over a few words, and Bucky doesn’t pray a whole lot but it comes clear and true in his head. 

Please, please, do not let Steve Rogers weasel his way overseas. 

*

The night before he’s shipped out, far away from all he's ever known, Steve climbs into his bed. There’s hardly any room for one, let alone two, and when Bucky doesn’t dare make a move to show that he’s awake—how could he not be, ninety pounds is still enough to make the bedframe groan—Steve helps himself to the few inches of space. 

Steve is small and bony in his arms, nesting himself against his chest like it’s the most natural thing in the entire universe. And it is. He fits snugly, perfectly, and Bucky acts his hardest when he tries to pass off his tightening grip around Steve as just shifting in his sleep. His heart is hammering out of his chest, probably bruising his friend’s back, probably giving away the way his lungs start to heave and his fingertips dig into Steve’s ribs a little. 

Steve is small and bony in his arms; he’s smart and clever and persistent and catches the flu before the rainy season even sets in. Steve is small and bony and his lips are barely chapped when they ghost across Bucky’s hand that he’s managed to pry out from underneath him, that crawl up his arm as Steve slowly shifts in his arms to face him. 

Steve’s lips are still chapped, those eons later when Bucky takes the cue—the slow cue, dotted with Steve’s hands making their way to Bucky’s face; the tentative way that Steve’s thin thumbs brush against Bucky’s cheekbones; the way that Steve has the courage of a hundred guys and puts their foreheads together—and kisses him.


End file.
